skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This brings up an interesting point. Anti-drone drones may well be much cheaper and more maneuverable than general purpose drones and people in general have far fewer ethical concerns when targeting a drone, as it is basically just property damage. In fact I suspect that some people would even look on drone hunting as some sort of extreme sport.

Another social effect of the introduction of a mass of visible drones is that it has the potential to drive a reasonable amount of an armed and already fairly paranoid population, completely and utterly nuts.

And whatever the police think about how useful these things are, I doubt that having a lot of drones flying around is going to encourage politeness, to put it mildly. A hell of a lot of people fear these things and fear makes a lot of people go crazy.
Wonderful. I'm glad you did this, it was entertaining to read
Seeking gigs - Netherlands or remote

info@blackmountainsecurity.nl

http://blackmountainsecurity.nl/ - a small startup located in Amsterdam who specialize in penetration testing and configuring, maintaining of applications who like to be tested for bugs which might compromise security.

We can also help with co-designing and developing applications in a secure fashion.

Skill set:
* Python-(Django)

* Git

* Ruby

* Encryption

* Security testing

* Cloud deployment at AWS/Heroku

* Configuring and maintaining of security of linux/unix systems.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Build systems like GNU Make pull information about the file system to find out what has been updated. All we basically have to do is to

1) move from an information pull to a push. (Sidenote: This is something that 'kind of' works in OSX GUI, although it seems to me that 10.7 has broken this functionality for certain usecases. E.g. I'm connected to my host mac with my linux vm through SSH and when I've updated a file from within that VM, the host Finder windows get updated automatically and Preview.app windows get updated when I click into them).

2) Extend the functionality to runtimes as well, i.e. enable hotloading like in the new Unreal engine.
Surprisingly, they source them here by visiting the States and finding people the same way Zynga & Google would. I was recently recruited for a project for a startup in Shanghai recently -- the most complicated part is the compensation part as most USA based services don't accept payments from China, including Google Wallet.

And no, mandarin isn't a requirement. I'm not really teaching english like those stories from japanese blogs -- I'll be coding in coffeescript for my wages.
Not sure if they should kill JavaFX. But they should kill the browser plugin. No one uses java in the browser anymore and it's a giant security hole.
True, I worked in a number of call centres a few years back.
There is a variety of cultures in these places, from having to turn up in a suit and tie and account for your time down to 10 second intervals to super laid back.

More formal places did tend to pay better and provide better equipment though. I had experiences in some where you had to twiddle with the headphone wire and hold it in the right position or you wouldn't be able to hear the customer.

The market for call centre workers back in ~2007 was highly liquid, if you got sick of one job after a few months it was no big deal to just quit on the spot and be able to walk into another one within a week or two.
What's function prototype validation? Can you expand on this?
.. Or you could, you know, just use whatever IDE is appropriate for your language and be a lot more productive than you ever could with Vim.
Can anyone tell me what's the obsession with updating the OS? I've been trying to turn off OS updates for android because it's very annoying.
Things I Learned From Founding Technology Companies
I think it's largely even simpler than you say:

They copied everything. They stopped even trying to think up a new idea.
I think the GGP was referring mainly to workplaces that don't involve dealing with dangerous equipment. Besides there's a big difference between smoking some pot outside of work hours and coming to work under the influence of meth.

When I worked in low paid (mainly call centre) jobs, people coming to work high was a pretty common thing. The jobs were easy and repetitive enough that it didn't affect performance at all. In fact if they had started drug testing they would probably have lost many of their best employees.
A technically versed creative mind is wasted on any repetitive task.

I find that certain repetitive tasks help free my mind up to wander around, think more abstractly about my code.

What's important to me is that my tools give me a choice about this.
I doubt apple makes a substantial amount from developers alone. Quoting [1] which is the research I believe rmah is talking about...

"Global Apple App Store revenue is set to increase to $4.9 billion in 2012, up from $2.9 billion in 2011, according to an IHS Screen Digest Mobile Analyst Commentary from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). This means that nearly half of the revenue generated by the App Store in its five-year history will be earned this year alone."

Those are some pretty strong numbers. Given that the number is projected, even with a generous error rate of +-20%, any revenue from developer fee will be eclipsed by 4.9 billion.

While the author's estimate that apple generates 15% of its revenue from developers is inaccurate, it has to be said that the entry fee to get into iphone / ipad development is high. I would know since I'm currently developing a product that works across iphone / android / web. Here are our costs thus far (excluding phone-device prices ).

Apple:

Mac Air 1200$

Developer account 99$

DUNS number 200$

Server certificate for notifications 175$

Android:
Developer account 25$

<For development - Use the mac or boot an old clunky win
laptop with Win-XP on it>

Web:
0$ so far

Developing for apple devices is costly. For the same 1200$ that I could spend on mac air, I can get 2 powerful Win-7 laptops - ~ 500-700$ each [2]. Device fragmentation on android does require you to test on more devices, but there are services[3] that allow you to work around that problem. Besides, when netflix can release their app by testing it on a subset of 8 android devices [4], I don't see why that strategy is not good enough for others.

The author does have a point, but one that should not have been expressed as a percentage of apple revenues.

[1] - http://www.isuppli.com/Media-Research/News/pages/Maps-and-Pa...

[2] - http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/vostro-laptop-deals

[3] - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1852248/is-there-an-andro...

[4] - http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/03/testing-netflix-on-andro...

[EDIT] - Formatting
But Android 2.3 is more functional than iOS6, even without rooting.
Hacking Challenge #1: Christmas visits nightmare
Many years ago, I earnt a little extra cash as security at large rock concerts. It was not my scene, and I was frankly just standing around. I clearly remember stopping a suspicious clean cut man in his mid forties, wearing ironed jeans and matching denim jacket... In a stadium of 20,000 long haired students in dirty black t-shirts.

He flipped a warrent card at me an angrily said "drugs squad"
I hoped our boys in blue also had people who could pass for real - and I suspect the same for any local cops hanging around on IRC. They will stand out like 40 year olds in pressed denim.
I'm guessing the payment scales depend on the cost of living in your area. They pay more in Silicon Valley compared to Toronto because a 1500 sqft single family home in SV is around $1M.
If financial independence is your only goal, you've stared a startup for the wrong reason.
Tried it and liked it. The UI is pretty clear even if it's not ready for production.

I think this is what a lot of us missed. As webdesign is moving away from wysiwyg we need a new breed of text editors (I love Emacs but it's not very efficient for CSS/HTML/JS development).
Mathematicians are making progress with the multiplicative groups used by RSA and DSA, which indicates that the security margins for RSA and DSA are lower than they are for elliptic curve groups. I can't pretend to be literate here but Daniel Bernstein would point out the numeric field sieve as an example of something that threatens RSA and DSA but not ECC.

As I understand it, ECC is also significantly faster.
If it's a droll reference to that thread last week about how there are no useful rational approximations, then "whoosh" and well played, sir:)
> Spotify need the record companies, but the record companies don't need Spotify. For now the record companies are squeezing Spotify for all their revenue, but it's no trouble to them if Spotify goes out of business.

I suspect Spotify knows this, and is betting on getting too big to fail before the record companies push them under.
Cbuilder, lightweight CSV templates for Rails
That depends, Pot is detected by a drugs test if the person has used within around 3 weeks.

So you would get a positive reading from somebody who went to a party 2 weekends ago and took a couple of hits from a joint.
Time management with the Pomodoro Technique
The Risks of Growth Hacking and How to Build Authentic Sustainable Growth
Could it be that every positive integer is the sum of at most k such numbers, for some fixed k?

EDIT: No.

Proof. Fix a positive integer k. How many k-tuples of such numbers are there, whose sum is at most x? (For this to work, there would always need to be at least x of them.)

If (2^a_1 + 3^b_1 + 5^c_1 + 7^d_1) + ... + (2^a_k + 3^b_k + 5^c_k + 7^d_k) <= x, then all the exponents are at most log_2(x). So the number of all such sums is at most [log_2(x)]^(4k). And that is asymptotically less than x.

EDIT 2: But I'm sure the required k grows pretty slowly. This would be a workable technique for very large numbers indeed.
ImpactJS is awesome. Can you shed some light on how successful it's been?
> Also, aside from the obvious example of WebGL, what's something important that IE10 doesn't do?

* Device orientation

* Full screen

* Mouse lock

* Web Audio
Also, some of the articles mention things that don't work in IE but do work elsewhere (like the ammo.js physics library). I am quite impressed that Microsoft is sponsoring this.
Just a few comments on a well-written article that makes some good points:

> No health or legal risks

On the contrary -- the health risk arises primarily because of the sedentary lifestyle. It's hard to imagine anything so hard on one's health and longevity prospects as sitting and typing all day.

As to legal risks, they're certainly on the upswing, as people who can't program try to steal the work of those who can, and as people try to take generic methods, known to all, and turn them into private property.

Apart from those quibbles, a nice article.
The meaning of "to fish by trailing a lure or baited hook from a moving boat" far predates the internet version of the word "troll". This is correct, metaphorical usage.
I must strongly disagree with you. It sounds like you have already given up.

On this forum someone posted a way to visualize factorizations of numbers in Haskell. Quickly someone put up a javascript version. Soon I expect someone will turn it to a webapp that makes it possible for anyone to use and if lucky may go 'viral'. The power of networks is in that kind of recursive mashup. This is a toy now but hopefully is a sign of things to come. Consider that in a way, google and stackoverflow are caches for experience. Memoizing experience to increase efficiency. In a very real sense the ease of networks and communication results in a non trivial increase in the intelligence of the society.

We hope that there will be a whole group of researchers willing to take the different parts of this process [(e.g. model organisms, high throughput omics technologies, drug development and repurposing, cellular and stem cell research)] and produce enough data so that it will become a whole new line of research. Like the small amounts of giving inherent in crowdfunding, we think many experts, each contributing a small amount of research, can accomplish much in aggregate. Crowdsourced research may enable new advancements that were not possible before.

http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2012/07/guest-post-jimmy-lin-...

Also worth pointing out is that while the specific instance of drones was not foremost in the list of dystopian worries, a surveillance society has existed as a worry since at least the 1940's. But despite the worries of Orwell and Huxley society is not near as bad as they expected. Indeed on average things are better for most people. From the average poor European to the average African.

It is easier to focus on the bad aspects of a thing and worry on the worst possible outcome. Indeed that is the nature of humanity for that Type of error is least costly from an evolutionary perspective. But networks are a tool. A tool which gives more than it takes, A good thing.

Information is power. Anything that increases the fluidity of its flow and its abundance is on the side of freedom. While it is true that everyone will be watched. It is also true that everyone will be watched, it will be ever harder for political leaders to deceive. The answer is not to stifle information flow but to make tools that make it possible to be hidden in plain site. Push decentralization, Encryption, clothing, tattoos, camera detection, IR accessories or private camera detecting-IR emitting drones. Action is the answer not worrying and lamenting. A Good thing can only be illegal if the governed quietly succumb to the inevitability of its occurrence.
Or maybe different phones with same internals (see SonyE's Xperia 2011 line which all got ICS updates).
try this http://live.amon.cx/
>The difference between reversing a string and pulling data from a database are, literally, completely different tasks. The killer is that the latter is something that a candidate will do in a job.

And this is where you misunderstand the purpose of these types of questions. Programming is a very dynamic field where you're likely be required to solve novel problems daily (not novel in the grand scheme of programming, but novel to you). You need the mental flexibility and fluidity to solve problems you haven't entirely encountered before. Testing specifically what you do at the job is the wrong approach. You need to test the required mental faculties to solve novel problems. Programming is not pulling data from a database, writing glue code, and shoving it to the screen. It's solving new problems every day.
I don't think copying is the main reason of failure. Probably if they copy WoW they would be more succesful.
It wasn't the copying, it was the culture of AB split testing everything that killed them. AB (or multi-variate) testing can help improve an already successful product, but I'm not convinced it can build a good game from scratch (or from copy). A culture of design by AB split testing killed any chance they had at creating another breakthrough game.

Sending out emails to select users about possible future games, and counting click throughs as votes, with the idea of building the game with the most votes is probably doomed to failure. They double-downed on that strategy, brought in a bunch of MBA types (not evil people, but not great game designers either) to statistically manage game development. It can't be too surprising that great games aren't built that way, and a game company without great games can't survive forever.
What's the appropriate IDE for Haskell that will make me a lot more productive than I could ever be with Vim?

What's the appropriate IDE for Ruby that will make me more a lot more productive than I could ever be with Vim?
"Trolling" actually is mostly valid here, by definition (can mean "to search for something"), but I agree this was really confusing at first.
Full screen in IE10 doesn't matter much, in Metro it's fullscreen.

Mouse lock doesn't matter without WebGL IMO, especially since some browser vendors require Fullscreen first.

Web Audio and Device Orientation are quite important, though.
Microsoft yes (example: Windows Vista). The others... no. And that is a good thing, for them.
I guess this is a pretty good example of the difference between a business built based on "innovation" vs "extraction". With innovation, you consistently make new and exciting products and your customers are really happy. With an extraction-based model, you corner out the market, and then you impose access fees, taxes, etc on the users.

Instead of going with innovation, Zynga decided to go with extraction, and they are now paying a heavy price. Farmville, Cityville, etc, are all essentially just the same game. They add clicks and beeps to get middle-aged housewives to pay $5/month for virtual items and I guess it's simply not sustainable.

As a side note, I've been to Zynga's headquarters in SF. The offices are beautiful, and spacious. My friend pointed out a human-sized statue of the Zynga's dog that was repainted for something like $10-20k because apparently the CEO didn't like the color. You can walk around and see a lot of dot-com waste everywhere. We went to one of the snack areas, and there were opened bags of organic chips just laying around. Apparently, they have an office-supply vending machine filled with $100 wireless keyboards, mice, etc, that people just take whenever they want.

As an (unhappy) investor, it certainly looks like there is a lot of room to cut the fat at that company, so maybe they can slash their costs relative to their revenues and turn it back into a viable business.
>Programmer is like the modern villager. Villagers grew food and made stuff and that's what you ever needed. The programmer writes code and everything in our civilization is already code or it will be.

That's an extremely short-sighted way to look at it.

In fact, take out the non-programmers, and all programming will collapse -- literally come to a halt.

You know, guys like those that grow and transport out food, clean up the streets and the garbage, cook our meals, mine our coal, produce our energy, drill our petrol, build our houses, etc etc.

People seem to think that because he have the "information superhighway" (sic) we're, say, above actual highways. Where the fact is that without truckers and highways and oil and the like, the "information superhighway" will collapse in a few days.

In fact, you can take programming out of the picture, and the whole world will keep on turning, at least as well as it did in the sixties or fifties.

The reverse, not so much. Programming is indeed a pervasive but insignificant in the grand scheme of things addition to the workings of our society.
There is an interesting parallel to the Zynga model and before you think I'm being too extreme, consider my opinion nihilistic in the sense that I don't believe Zynga is or has ever been Evil.

Zynga was a casino. The games offered no real value to their consumers but neither do casinos. The only reason why you continue to play and pay for in game purchases is to get back the high of doing something well; you want to feel the rush of winning.

Their main fault wasn't that they did this, it was that they couldn't do it well enough. Addiction's downside is that gains are subjected to the law of diminishing returns. Basically, that your happiness is logarithmic. In a casino, they've overcome this logarithmic challenge naturally, by allowing you to put in an infinite amount of money. The gains are still logarithmic, hence why people can go from gambling $20 to losing their house in short order but Zynga could never figure out how to replicate this in their casino.

I think this wont be the last time we see this model in gaming, but the next business will first need to solve this problem: if you make money through addiction simulated behavior, how do you overcome the log returns associated with it?
Datacenter in a container
How to tell if you're stressed?
This is kind of an odd question... but here goes.

I love to work. When I'm really into a project, I'm the type of person who can go at it from the time I wake up until the sunrises. It isn't uncommon for me to forget to eat (have to force myself away from the computer if I am really into a task!). Last summer, I did this for a few months straight, 6 days a week (weekends, I'd take it a little easier).

But the weird thing is, I enjoy it. I am excited to wake up in the morning to get started on where I left off. It feels great to polish off a few features before going to bed on a high note.

My question is, how do I know if I'm overworking myself? Am I stressed? It doesn't feel like it, but... yeah, what are the signs?
The world is rapidly moving away from client side plug-ins. Anyone that thinks they are the future is probably not particularly up to date. Java is used for enterprise server side development. Expecting anything else is extremely unlikely.
Sometimes I curse like a fucking sailor, but that doesn't mean I'm incapable of not cursing when necessary/appropriate.

I bet most of us here on HN use expletives quite a lot in their everyday conversations among friends. It's just part of expressing yourself and your feelings.

Besides, the most vocal opponents of expletives tend to be religious. It's kind of sad when even the word "cursing" is so horrifying that you have to call it "cussing" instead.

Cursing is just another difference between the ways you speak in different situations. Imagine you're discussing the global recession with one of your friends. Which one of these sounds more natural:

- "Those rather reprehensible individuals at Wall Street
bear the brunt of the blame for this rather dreadful
economic predicament we're in."

vs.

- "Those fucking scumbags on Wall Street caused this mess."

Something like the first one is necessary here on HN, because we're all civilized and shit, but the second example is how you'll speak among friends. At least if you're not some kind of prissy weirdo.
> As an (unhappy) investor

I don't think I'm the only one here that would love to hear that story!
"Luc, a packet has arrived for you!"

"What is it?"

"Your datacenter"

Talking about a special delivery :D
Amon Plus is great if you need quick & simple server/app monitoring. I've been using it for several months and have gotten steady metrics from the alerting, logging and graphs - all of which was fairly easy to set up. The creator is pretty quick to respond to any questions about the app, and is continually improving the project.

With that said, if you're looking for deep insight for performance, metrics, etc - then I'd still have to say that New Relic would be your best bet.
I don't know about Haskell.

For Ruby there's RubyMine at least.
For Javascript/HTML there are Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ and WebStorm.
Hopefully they'll do a better job than last time they tried this: the galaxy S had a custom filesystem called RFS, in reality it was just fat32 with crappy journaling bolted on. It totally crippled the phone, causing a lengthly block every time a file was closed. It would also fight with the chips own wear levelling algorithms. It sucked. If you owned that phone and thought it sucked, with loads of UI lag, it was because of samsung's custom filesystem, which was also supposedly optimised for NAND.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=799931
I would love something like this for Python (Flask) and Node.js.
Anyone who was cheated by Motorola should sue them for the price of the phone in small claims court. Motorola might be able to weasel out and win the case depending on the actual language of what they promised. But if enough customers sue them it will create a PR nightmare and major legal expense to the extent that they will be forced to reverse their decision.
An aside: I find that this site looks absolutely beautiful on my phone.
>"Do something you love" is a myth.

As someone who is currently working his dream job, this statement couldn't be further from the truth.
Samsung devices have a pretty good stock ROMs out of the box. Never had the need to flash my Galaxy S2. And they have flashing-free and reversible rooting methods.